13. Sabrina
— ? —
Sabrina
The storm hit the island without warning.
One moment the sky was gray and heavy, a summer overcast that usually burned off by afternoon. The next, thunder cracked so loud it shook the windows, and rain came down in sheets so thick I couldn’t see the oak tree at the edge of the yard.
Ivy was already asleep, exhausted from a day of beach exploration and sandcastle construction. I’d put her down early, grateful for the quiet, and now I sat on the couch listening to the wind howl and wondering if the cabin’s ancient roof would hold.
The power went out early.
The darkness was absolute. No streetlights this far from town, no neighbors close enough for their windows to cast a glow. I fumbled for my phone and turned on the flashlight, casting a weak beam across the living room.
“Perfect,” I muttered. “This is exactly what I needed.”
I found candles in the kitchen drawer, mismatched emergency supplies left by some previous tenant. The wicks were stiff and hard to light, but eventually I had a few flickering flames arranged on the coffee table, and the walls jumped and shivered with every gust of wind.
The rain was getting louder. I could hear it pounding against the roof, finding its way through cracks and seams, dripping somewhere in the back of the cabin. Another leak. Of course.
A knock at the door made me jump so hard I almost knocked over a candle.
Nobody should be out in this weather. Nobody sane, anyway.
I grabbed my phone and approached the door cautiously, my heart hammering against my ribs. The knock came again, more insistent this time.
“Sabrina?” Killian’s voice, barely audible over the storm. “It’s me. Are you okay?”
I yanked the door open.
He stood on the porch, absolutely soaked. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his shirt clinging to his chest and shoulders, water streaming down his face. He was drenched to the bone. He might as well have swum here.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I was worried.” He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, dripping all over the floor. “The storm hit faster than the forecast said, and I wanted to make sure you and Ivy were all right.”
“We’re fine. We were fine before you showed up and made my floor into a swimming pool.”
“The roads are flooded out past the harbor. I barely made it through.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come.”
“I had to come.” He said it simply, as though nothing could be more obvious. “I couldn’t sit in that house knowing you were out here alone in this.”
I wanted to be angry. I was angry, the familiar burn of it sitting hot in my chest. But underneath the anger was a pull I didn’t want to examine too closely.
He’d driven through a storm to make sure we were safe.
He’d risked the flooded roads and the lightning and God knows what else because he couldn’t stand the thought of us facing this alone.
“You’re an idiot,” I said.
“I’m aware.”
A crack of thunder split the air, and the whole cabin shuddered. Through the window, I could see the wind bending the trees at impossible angles, branches whipping back and forth in the darkness.
Then I heard it. A crash, loud and metallic, coming from somewhere outside.
“What was that?”
Killian was already moving toward the back door. “Stay here.”
“Like hell I will.”
“Sabrina, please. Just let me check it out.”
“In the dark? In this storm? You’ll break your neck.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He grabbed one of the candles and pushed out into the rain before I could stop him. I watched through the window, the flashlight on my phone catching glimpses of him moving through the yard, his broad shoulders hunched against the wind.
The wait was agonizing. Every flash of lightning showed me a different snapshot of the chaos outside: the oak tree swaying dangerously, the fence at the edge of the property leaning at an alarming angle, debris scattered across the grass.
Then I saw him go down.
One moment he was walking toward the garden shed. The next, his foot caught on something and he pitched forward, disappearing from view behind a tangle of fallen branches.
My heart stopped.
I was out the door before I could think about it, rain soaking me immediately, the cold shock of it making me gasp. I stumbled across the yard, slipping on the wet grass, my phone beam bouncing wildly.
“Killian? Killian!”
“I’m fine.” His voice came from somewhere in the darkness. “I’m fine, just tripped on something.”
I found him struggling to his feet, one hand braced against the fallen fence. He was covered in mud and leaves, and he was smiling, actually smiling, like falling on his face in a hurricane was hilarious.
“The shed door came off its hinges,” he said. “That’s what made the noise. Nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious? You could have broken your neck!”
“But I didn’t. Come on, let’s get back inside.”
He put his arm around my shoulders, steadying himself, and we staggered back toward the cabin together. I was shivering by the time we made it through the door, my teeth chattering, my clothes plastered to my body.
Killian closed the door behind us and leaned against it, breathing hard. In the candlelight, I could see him properly for the first time since he’d come inside.
He was bleeding.
“You’re hurt.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the candles. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“It’s nothing.”
“That’s not nothing, that’s blood, Killian. A lot of blood.”
The cut was on his left forearm, deep and ragged, probably from the broken fence or some piece of debris in the yard. It was bleeding freely, dark rivulets running down his wrist and dripping onto the floor.
“Sit down.” I pushed him toward the couch. “Don’t move. I’ll get the first aid kit.”
The first aid kit was under the bathroom sink, barely stocked but better than nothing. I grabbed it and brought it back to him, my hands shaking from cold and adrenaline and a want I refused to look at.
“This is going to need proper bandaging. Come to the bathroom where I can see what I’m doing.”
“Sabrina, really, it’s fine. I’ve had worse.”
“I don’t care what you’ve had. Move.”
He followed me to the bathroom, ducking through the narrow doorway.
The space was tiny, barely big enough for the two of us, and when I closed the door to keep the light from waking Ivy, we were pressed so close together I could feel the heat radiating off his body despite the cold of his wet clothes.
This close, I couldn’t not look at him. The wet shirt was plastered to every line of his chest, gone see-through, and I could see the shift of muscle underneath when he breathed.
A drop of water tracked down the column of his throat and disappeared under his collar and I watched it go with more attention than anything else in the room deserved.
Don’t, I told myself. Do not think about following that drop with your mouth. We are in a bathroom the size of a coffin, our daughter is asleep down the hall, and this man broke your heart barely a few weeks ago. Do not.
I thought about it anyway. My thighs pressed together of their own accord, and I hated the small, humiliating flood of heat that answered.
I set my phone on the edge of the sink, angling the flashlight toward his arm. The cut was ugly, the edges ragged, but it wasn’t as deep as I’d feared. I cleaned it with antiseptic, and he hissed through his teeth but didn’t pull away.
“You’re an idiot,” I said again, because it bore repeating.
“You mentioned that.”
“I’m mentioning it again. What were you thinking, going out there in the dark? You could have been seriously hurt. You could have been killed.”
“I had to see what made that noise.”
“No, you didn’t. You could have waited until morning. You could have used common sense for once in your life.”
“And if something had been wrong? If the shed had hit the cabin, or the fence had taken out a window? I needed to know you were safe.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” His voice was quiet. “That doesn’t mean I stop wanting to protect you.”
I wrapped the bandage around his arm, pulling it tight, focusing on the task instead of looking at his face. His skin was warm under my fingers despite the cold of his wet clothes, and I could feel his pulse beating steady and strong beneath the surface.
“There.” I secured the bandage with medical tape. “You’ll live.”
“Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to the first aid kit. I’m just the delivery mechanism.”
I started to pull my hands away, but he caught them. His grip was gentle but firm, his fingers wrapping around my wrists.
“Sabrina.”
“Don’t.”
“I would die for you.” He said it simply, without drama or hesitation. “You know that, right? If anything ever threatened you or Ivy, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d put myself between you and whatever was coming.”
“That’s not romantic. That’s reckless.”
“It’s the truth.”
His eyes were dark in the dim light, the candlelight pulling the hollows of his face into shadow. He looked exhausted and earnest and so painfully familiar that my chest ached with it.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, and I hated how true it was.
“I’ve missed you so much, and I hate it.
I hate that we’re here, that everything is broken, that we loved each other so much and somehow ended up in this tiny bathroom while our daughter sleeps in the next room and neither of us knows how to fix what went wrong. ”
“I know how to fix it.”
“No, you don’t. You think you do, but you don’t. You think you can show up in a storm and fix a shed and bleed all over my floor and everything will be okay. But it won’t be okay, Killian. Nothing is okay.”
“I know.” He pulled me closer, his hands sliding up to cup my face.
“I know nothing is okay. But I’m not going to stop trying.
I’m not going to stop showing up, even when you tell me not to, even when you’re angry, even when everything seems impossible.
Because you’re worth it. You’ve always been worth it. ”
“You can’t just say things and expect them to change everything.”